(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system that recognize a hand gesture using selective illumination that can reliably perform hand gesture recognition by effectively removing an unnecessary image and noise including static disturbance light and dynamic disturbance light.
(b) Description of the Related Art
Nowadays, gesture recognition technology that recognizes (or detects) a hand gesture is applied to various fields (e.g., game, vehicle). A system that recognizes a hand gesture includes a hand recognition system that is based on color information, a shape based hand recognition system, and a three-dimensional information based hand recognition system.
The hand recognition system that is based on color information is a system that searches for colors such as a skin color within stored color information and recognizes a hand based on a size and a shape of the hand. The hand recognition system that is based on color information utilizes a simple recognition algorithm, however, the system is affected by a peripheral environment such as a varying skin colors from person to person and based on light change, and the system may not be used at night where color differentiation cannot be determined.
The shape based hand recognition system is a system that recognizes a hand, for example, through matching of a template from an existing database (DB) and an image. The shape based hand recognition system may require an increased number of templates, a calculation amount exponentially increases, and the shape based hand recognition system depends on a hand size as well as a hand shape.
The three-dimensional information based hand recognition system is an active research field and obtains a three-dimensional image using an imaging device, and recognizes a hand based on depth information. The three-dimensional information based hand recognition system can use three-dimensional information, however, the low cost competitive power of the system is affected by disturbance light and the system has an obstacle limitation between a user and an imaging device.
The hand recognition system described above is affected by an external light source, and a color and a shadow of an object are thus changed causing a probability that a recognition error may occur to increase.
The above information disclosed in this section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.